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Quadrennial Muse

  This is how February ends. Nature's softest blossoms and a long stretch of thin sighs sticking onto the last splinters of a hope that used to be. A death and another. Staring into empty hands. A hospital bed. A woman in labour for a child whose casket and clothes await. February is for swift hands that brush off hasty tears.  I linger on the cusps of cyclopian dreams and sink my head beneath double sided mirrors and when I gasp, I do not know whose name my tong'ue speaks. This is how February ends. In Rhetorics. What would you have done in the face of the flames? Would you cradle the warmth in the undertones of your self destructive thoughts? Would you give it room for certainty, say, there is a ghost town of radicals and the best of them are scholars? Say, they make their homes under the ashes of Alexandria and they read the books that were grabbed by flames before arms could reach them? The best of them lawyers. They think Atlantis was better off uninhibited. They speak of...
Recent posts

A bunch of Keys to Al Jannah

For you, I'll grieve silently. The same way I kept my feelings clutched in my hands while you were here baring your chest open even though I knew how hard that was for you. I'll do it with my head hung low so your ghost doesn't sit on top of my dreams wondering what all the fuss is about. why now? When all you are is a fragrance above the clouds. Why now? When you are just another breath in the wind and your hands can no longer reach the depths of my soul to squeeze out the apprehension that shook my bones and my trust in men like you. I'll shed these silent tears and in this overflow, say the words that never left my lips when your eyes searched mine: I love you too .  They say we speak some words too late. But late doesn't lessen the intent and their truth. Except late has so much weight. Late can crush a single lung with a sigh. Tell me again what they said about time. How it makes love less appealing with age. How it beckons an emptiness for every age. The itch ...

Silent Acquiescence

                                                He clamps the Bible in his hands and recites the vows. I toss in the air a shaking left hand and I look over my shoulder as I say I believe. It comes out as a question instead. This brown puddle should cleanse me of my grim.  The man of God is wabbly from my weight,  the might of my iniquity , the same lake waters which these trees have drank to their own death, take me whole as I am sinful and half repentant, and I am born again. I drain my ears of the muck that licked its way inside and the graveyard in my womb rattles with incipient bones.  oh ancient of days   with hair of white, a hallow and a veil, Thy kingdom come... trains of blue of frothing immortality, Thy will be done, not our glory and shame untoward.   Give us this day, bones that do not crumble, fill with pat...

The sound of a teardrop

Midnight seeps through a crack and morphs into dawn. Flowers will drink the morning dew and wither in this lopsided pattern of faded blues.  Seasons are fleeting from weddings and wakes to wedding veils turned into funeral shrouds. Ebbing heavenwards. Where is hope? I am trying to tell a tale that shifts like a gale. I am more afraid of living than I am of dying. Blood to the earth. Tears, black and graveyards. Song to the skies. Dew, moon, and sunlight. The night bedecked with stars lays in his slumber in broken silence. Perhaps the dead have a place of their own where they are locked up and tamed. Perhaps they dance and sing in their own haze.   For   what is death but   black and blue   with red and   plenty of empty greys In this atmosphere of annihilation, I am an artist with a heavy heart stuck with an empty canvas. I want to paint my paternal grandmother’s soul and my maternal grandfather’s laughter. I want to paint his r...

Marred Bliss

Photo by Jun Perez on Pinterest   Light and shadow. Master of the art, you know how to play this game. Toss a coin, no head or tail. It balanced on its edge swirling in endless circles. It’s not a win. You are just good with schemes. The sky lights up. The world is grey. It’s going to rain tonight. The sky is on fire .The lake has hushed her song. Hear the thunder? You look up and sigh. Sometimes, the world is sad too.   Birds fold their wings in silent muse, Omnipotent orb takes its last sip from the lake's silver fuse, Trees adapt and bend, drink from the wind's wrath, Nature dwindling, fading lush and hues of grey.... You stick out your tongue and taste the first raindrops. You said when you were younger, you bathed in its waters. That you stood under the gutter and shivered .The rain water stung your skin as she, the other mum that life offered you scrubbed your face with soap and stone while your step brothers and sisters rolled on thei...

Aubade

                                                                       Song of the morning. Winter bliss. The things that were. Won’t ever be. The songs we sang have dried up in our throats. The melodies morphed back into pain. A thousand clouds, just a star or two. Beneath the leafless tree, a manic brain on a moonless sky. Flashing satin phantoms in the night. Whispers in the trees. Gentle laps on the stream. In the darkness, eyes become ears; blinking in the infinite emptiness of nocturnal and thoughts, wholesome darkness that can be touched. Darkness that enshrouds. I’ll rip a little bit of it and wear its black as a crown for pain. The rest I shall stuff in the voids of my soul to make me feel whole. A tear then two. Torrents from a clouded soul. Rushing breath and muffled ...

Echoes of yesterday

They were lovers in the dark, hands groping in the emptiness for something solid to hold. They were the same chords of the guitar playing different songs; Melancholy and nostalgia The dying embers of a once fierce flame. The last raindrop on sandy soil. Their rhyme was a water droplet on cold asphalt unfelt, forlorn, without cognizance.  February and July. Abandoned like crayons of a child at play. They were twin roaches looking for a home in the heart of darkness, delving deep into the black mess. Getting lost in the harrowing hues. Tumbling. Falling. Breaking. They were a whirlwind that gathered momentum and gyrated to a great crescendo collecting everything on its path, spewing dust, and clouding the whole town with wonder but upon daylight, the god of new beginnings, everyone dusted their apparel the wind now just a memory. Forgotten. She was July. Stoic. She was all of July stars, its sun, moon, freeze, mirth, and song. A half-moon hidden by the clouds on ra...